Josh: I'm adding my vote for a "--export-picture" option for Metaflac in 1.1.3.

I routinely add cover art to my whole-album flacs now and I'm in the habit of deleting the scanned jpgs when I'm done. When I edit metadata in my flacs, I use a script to dump the metadata to files, edit the offending file (usually a cue sheet), clear the tags in the flac and then re-embed.

Without a way to extract the pictures, I'm afraid that I'll end up loosing the images when I clear tags.

I am glad it will be backward compatible with all FLAC players (version 1.1.x decoders). Nice to see album art option for art support included.

The only thing I see missing (and which I saw someone else mentioned also) is Lyrics support, as iTunes and other players support display of song lyrics if it is embedded in the audio file via 'a tag'. Since there is no standard for a lyrics tag I am aware of (iTunes uses their own in M4A and ALAC lossless files they create), you would have to define one. Lyrics are a text field that is multi-line text with carriage returns/linefeed characters that should fit well in a text tag field and most songs lyrics are not that big in size. It would be a "nice to have" optional tag feature so people could look at the words to the song in their audio player (if the player supported song lyrics display).

I write my own songs and would like to embed the lyrics so my customers/listeners can see the words/have them included in the audio file. Also I like to insert lyrics into the audio file when I purchase a song or rip one from a CD I own. I know many artists would likely use this lyrics feature to "add value" to their music when distributing it via FLAC files. It is always nice to have both lyrics and artwork in my opinion. I appreciate any consideratiuon you can give this text lyrics option. It would truly make FLAC an even better and more versatile audio encoding file format.

Thanks again for this FLAC update. I look forward to the future growth of FLAC in hardware devices and software apps.

ok, but if it's just a tag you can already embed lyrics with flac 1.1.3 with its new option --tag-from-file

Josh

I guess what I am asking for Josh is a new standardized lyric tag for FLAC in the 1.1.3 spec. Since lyrics are usually lines of text (with carrage returns/linefeeds embedded), i.e. a plain textfile, there has to be some standard tag name defined to denote lyrics embedded in FLAC files so all players can access/read the lyrics properly. I don't know the technical ways Apple iTunes embeds Lyrics in M4A and lossless ALAC files it creates, but it must be through atoms/tags or something similar. Just wanted to have a standard lyrics tag (or embed option) defined in the FLAC spec. Hope this helps.

I guess what I am asking for Josh is a new standardized lyric tag for FLAC in the 1.1.3 spec.

Well, why don't you just stick with LYRICS tag? Is there a meaningful reason to elaborate on a new RFC/ISO/whatever standard for just LYRICS tag?

Is there already a lyrics tag for FLAC files that is in standard use. If so, I have never seen or heard of one. Is it part of Vorbis comments and in wide use? Please enlighten us so we can ask WinAmp and other FLAC supporting audio players to recognize this standardized lyrics tag to suport display of lyrics in FLAC files? Thanks in advance.

Also which FLAC audio encoding apps support this standard LYRICS tag for embedding a song lyrics inside a FLAC file? I have yet to find one. Perhaps I looked in the wrong places. I have never heard lyrics in FLAC files brought up as being possible before.

Thanks Josh. I Guess LYRICS is the name for embedding lyrics in FLACs then. Now we have to get FLAC supporting apps to recognize/support that. Also thanks for adding the picture and export_picture options to FLAC 1.1.3 - I know a lot of people have been wanting a standardized way to embed album cover art in their FLAC files.

I agree. But, for everyone's sake, please set standards like these as soon as possible before some idiot app or OS developer makes up his own and we're stuck with multiple different standards in a years time. I'd say at least before Apple has to create one of his own for when FLAC becomes natively part of the next OS X (Leopard, to be introduced in the spring of 2007).

I'd just like to go +1 with goodnews. It's true that a LYRICS option would be a great improvement to FLAC 1.1.3. With that, we would have what most people want besides FLAC music : (1) album art and (2) song lyrics. Josh, please think about it. IMHO, album art and song lyrics are simply complementary and should come together. Thanks in advance for implementing this as a defined standard ASAP, so that 3rd party developers can quickly support it in their FLAC-compatible applications (e.g. foobar2000, Music Library...).

BTW, about native FLAC support in Leopard, I've been hearding of it in the last few days, but is there any consistent information about it ? Is it confirmed ? Any links ?FLAC support in Leopard would probably mean FLAC support in QuickTime, which would mean FLAC support in iTunes for both Mac and Windows !!!

I suggest adding a --channel-mask option to flac and the channel assignment table from WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE definition to the documentation. Unfortunately, there are still popular applications not supporting _EXTENSIBLE .

ok, turns out the trouble with this particular file is actually in the wave chunk handling; I think it is including non-'data' chunks that follow the 'data' chunk and treating them as audio. when I have more time after the next release I will look into the rest of the suite.

Josh[attachment=2624:attachment]

Turns out FLAC 1.1.3 beta 2 also cannot handle this WAV file without an error.

so you can import and now export....does export delete/move the picture from the FLAC file or just copy out it to a file/stdout?

yeah, maybe export is a bad word, but it's just a copy, it won't delete the metadata.

QUOTE (JWolf @ Nov 5 2006, 09:51)

Any idea how much longer until 1.1.3 is an official release? Any bugs we should be aware of in beta 2?

I've finished writing patches for the projects I know about (BTW if anyone needs one for an open source project and hasn't gotten one let me know). now I'm just going through the few remaining bugs on SF.

no major bugs have turned up so far since beta2. so I'm hoping in 2 weeks it will be ready.

QUOTE (ffooky @ Nov 5 2006, 13:28)

Josh, I just tried compiling beta2 and it hangs during the ./configure stage:

I realised I hadn't made the changes to the two files you recommended before but when I went to alter them, the alterations were already made. Am I missing something obvious ?

ugh, hmm.... ok I will take a look again. it is basically waiting on stdin so you could try hitting ^D, it might keep going.

QUOTE (Egor @ Nov 5 2006, 17:57)

Regarding multichannel WAVE_FORMAT_EX files

I suggest adding a --channel-mask option to flac and the channel assignment table from WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE definition to the documentation. Unfortunately, there are still popular applications not supporting _EXTENSIBLE .

ok, I don't have any intuition on whether this will be necessary yet, I would just say if you run into multichannel files that flac rejects, send them to me so I can build up some info on the oddball ones.

ok, I don't have any intuition on whether this will be necessary yet, I would just say if you run into multichannel files that flac rejects, send them to me so I can build up some info on the oddball ones.

Foobar2000 generates multichannel WAV files, which are not compatible with flac.exe 1.1.3 and Windows Media Encoder. I've sent you a sample to the address at sf.net.

One small problem with version info. I use flac.exe –version and metaflac.exe –show-vendor-tag in a windows batch script to determine if a .flac file needs to be updated to a newer version. The problem is the output is no longer consistent.